


All Through the Night

by Kat2107



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Germans are not really that exciting, Holocaust, Medical Experimentation, Nazis, Past Torture, Racism, Superheroes, anti-Semitism, might contain hints of football, unscrupulous abuse of current events
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rune is young and maybe a bit reckless.<br/>Rune grew up on stories of Captain America - the kind of stories that are true, told by someone who was there.<br/>Rune never wanted to be anything, but a hero.<br/>He´s good at being a hero.<br/>Problem is?<br/>Overprotective adoptive father.<br/>Who might have told him all those stories, but is too scarred and scared to be who he truly is.</p><p>But the world is changing.<br/>Again.<br/>SHIELD has fallen.<br/>Hydra has risen back into the spotlight.<br/>Old Alliances have  broken.</p><p>Everything is possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Saturday Night Life

**Author's Note:**

> One of the most precious moments in the MCU for me was Dr Erskine telling Steve that the first country, Hitler invaded, was Germany.  
> It´s a little understood fact, that the first thing, he had to do to take control over Germany, was to get rid of the competition.  
> The political situation in the Weimer Republic was chaotic at best and he used it to seize Germany and make it his.  
> But Germans did not just lay down and die. There have always, to the last minute, been people who worked against Hitler and many paid their resistance with their lives. 
> 
> So, as I was watching CA:TFA for the umpteenth time, it occured to me, that none of the commandos were German. And then it occured to me, that they surely would have met Germans while on their hunt for Hydra.  
> And then I asked myself, why there were no German Super Heroes (yes, I know about Kurt Wagner) when there had been in real life.  
> These people have been excluded from the knowledge of the western cultres for several reasons, usually, because they had affiliations to the communist party.  
> But people like this should not just be forgotten.
> 
> And from there it went.  
> I don´t actually know, how I ended up with Rune.  
> It just happened.  
> I don´t fight it anymore.
> 
>  
> 
> Please read the trigger warnings at the beginning of the chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- neo nazis  
> \- racism  
> \- racially motivated violence

It was a Saturday. A Saturday and a football game.

A Saturday, a football game and a fucking truck load of hooligans out to beat people to a pulp.

Hooligans who were not even hooligans, just a bunch of neo nazis under the guise of being against an anti-democratic islamist sect, a bunch of innocent football fans, a wall of police officers about to have a bad time… and him.

It was a Saturday in Germany and old ills reared their heads like the literal fucking Hydra that should have been defeated so long ago.

And again people would suffer because of it.

Well, bloody hell, not if he could help it.

If not him.

Who would?

 

Rune removed his leather gloves. Everybody always told him he had good hands. Strong, long fingered, weathered skin. But what made them special were the tattooed runes that that covered fingers, back, and wrist of both.

That made people not like his hands not so much anymore. All the wrong reminders.

He didn't need them to like him, or the runes. They didn't need to understand. This was not what any of this was about.

With a deep breath he turned and, shoving the leather gloves into his jacket pocket, wandered into the crowd.

His light brown hair, even brighter thanks to a buzz cut that left just a bit of longer hair on top, his worn jeans, stuffed into black, white laced combat boots made him fit in perfectly with the here and now. Moving between them was no problem. He looked like them. They admired his ink. They thought him a “brother.”

And that was just as he needed it to be.

 

Rune's name was not Rune. His birth certificate called him Andreas. He was not a Neo Nazi, only a young man with a talent and a goal. Had been born different, could have moved to the States years back, becoming a part of all those that emerged as heroes ever since Tony Stark had made himself Iron Man, ever since Captain Fucking America had been found and thawed – and didn't Chris just never

shut up about this guy? He knew there were people out there gunning for people like him. SHIELD for one. With their lists and their registrations, their numbers, treating him like an object to be catalogued, watched, studied.

But Rune liked his freedom. He didn’t want to be used in one of their oil wars.

So, no USA.

This was not like a Hollywood gig, not about being famous and collecting glory – not if he had to leave behind HIS people.

Because something else Rune was - and as unpopular as that might be within his own country and the rest of the world - Rune was German. Not just “I pay my taxes in Germany.” It meant something to him.

Granted, living in Germany was far from living in a war zone. People did not starve and die here. And the chance of being shot was so low nobody actually gave it a second thought ever. If being dull and safe had to be given a location, Germany was it. But it was his. And safe or not... shit still happened. Shit still went down.

And he was in a position to help.

The surrounding crowd hungered for violence. Rune watched as people fired themselves up as if readying themselves for a war. He heard the chants stating Germany's glory and the wish to kick all foreigners out. With a scowl of distaste, he pulled a black scarf from his pocket and tied it around his face. Nobody needed to see his face. Those believing they were the top of the food chain always tended to be prissy with people who beat them up. And violence would happen.

Which was why he was here.

The question was not whether a constant need to save lives existed.

It was whether somebody was willing to step up, should the need ever arise.

The chants grew louder. A few hundred people produced a lot of noise if they put their minds to it, and the morons around him believed in what they declared so unmistakably to the world. “Deutschland den Deutschen” “Germany to the Germans”

They had promoted themselves as concerned citizens trying to stop a possible threat for democracy, but in the end they would always show their true colors.

Not long now. The police line down the street in their tactical gear with the riot shields stood firm. Waiting. That gave Rune more time to familiarize himself with his surroundings. I case it came down to him having to pull someone out.

On the other side of the street, and god DAMN it he should have seen them sooner, a group of three people, a young woman, a teenage girl and a boy of around ten, huddled deep in the shadows of a house entrance. They didn't belong here. They should have left long ago. Why hadn't they?

He flowed through the crowd, already rubbing a hand over his jacket, painting a rune on the surface. Even if someone recognized the pattern, unlikely in itself, they wouldn’t know what to make of it.

Chris sometimes mocked him for it. But it helped, focused his thoughts, focused his ability, the thing that made him more than just an idiot with too much time on his hands, a death wish and a hero complex.

He felt the leather tightening as the material properties changed, the atoms rearranged and the surface became tougher, more resistant, more protective.

The eldest of the three pushed her two charges deeper into the shadows, as he approached.

And now he got closer, he caught the distinctive color of black hair lightened to appear more European.

Of Turkish descent, most likely. Oh yeah, that would go so well with the foreigner hating assholes that filled every god forsaken square meter of this street.

Rune stopped in front of them, blocking the sight and pulled down the scarf, showing his face.

“Alright guys. You are in a somewhat tight spot. Let me help you.“ He didn’t wait for an answer before taking off his jacket - after a glance over his shoulder made sure, nobody was about to lob a cobble stone at his back.

They were not there... yet.

Next went the hoodie. He tossed it at the middle girl, who caught it with a dumbfounded expression and a disbelieving look. She had not really expected anybody to come to their aid.

The jacket went back on and he forced a smile on his lips.

“Don't worry. I'm one of the good guys. I don't want you dead. I want you safe“

“Are you with the police?” The woman cast a look at his hands. She was perhaps 22, dressed in relaxed clothes, jeans, a windbreaker, but still made up for a night out. The boy wore a Cologne football scarf, as did the teenage girl. Fans, caught up in this by the color of their skin.

Rune placed his finger over his lips with a smile. Let them believe he was an undercover cop. If it made them trust him, he was so not above lying.

“Ok, this is how we're gonna do this. You” Rune pointed at the middle girl, “wear the hoodie, hood up, scarf openly visible. This should protect you. The boy will come with me.”

The kid eyed Rune with suspicion.

“He will hide under the jacket and you” the eldest eyed him warily, determined but still not sure of his motives, “should be good, as long as you keep your head down. Ok? “Tentative nods were the answer. The teenager had already shrugged into the hoodie. It was way too large, but nobody in a mob of people wearing hoods hiding their faces would think twice about her. The boy carefully stepped into his direction, fear and his attempt at not appearing scared all too obvious.

“What's your name?“ he asked, as if a name made an unknown nazi looking man any less dangerous.

“Rune.” Rune said it with a grin. “It's a nickname. It's a cool nickname.” He winked and flashed his best devil-may-care grin, wrapping an arm around the kid and pulling his jacket flap around the boy's shoulders. All he needed to do was hide the fact the boy had black hair and bronze skin.

“The ladies stay between us and the house walls, we walk quickly. Three streets ahead and to the right is a police line, there we should be out of the immediate danger zone. They will clash here. All good?” Nods all around “Great. All go!“

Rune pulled them out of the entrance and shoved them in the right direction. Not gentle or nice, this was not about gentle or nice. They went without complaint. More experienced in running and evasion than any inhabitant of a western country should be. Bloody shame. Fucking fuckheads.

The boy murmured a soft “Hey, my name is Akif. “ and pressed his head against Rune's chest, keeping it down and within the shelter of the jacket. The girls walked briskly along the facade, protected on one side by the walls of the houses.

Glances followed them, but all they saw were two women, one with light hair in the deep red light of the bengals and the street lights, and a man who looked as if he belonged here, spiriting a boy away that might just, by the power of association, be as perfectly acceptable as the nazi looking guy leading him.

All shiny, nothing to see.

A bottle crashed against the house wall right above their heads, shards raining down on the jacket. No danger. Not even remotely a danger. A bullet might go through the strengthened fabric, but not an aimlessly thrown bottle, not even meant for them. Rune quickly assessed the situation. Definitely not meant for them, merely random destruction.

One by-street passed and already the violent crowd thinned a bit.

Which was good, less possible attackers. And it was bad; less distraction for them.

“Walk faster, Aleyna.“ The elder, most likely sister, guided the younger along, a hand on her shoulder, shoving her forward, when she threatened to freeze. Rune had to admire that. It took a fuck ton of courage to walk along a street when literally every person around you hated you and one stray glance could be enough to notice your looks didn't exactly fit in.

“Just walk. You're safe. When they notice you, run to the police line. I can hold them off easily.“

She cast him a doubtful look. Rune winked, let her see healthy confidence. “Promise. I'm good.“

Her glance wandered over his body. Whatever she saw under his wide open jacket and his thin black shirt seemed to convince her, he actually could keep that promise. She nodded and went back to solely care for the street in front of her and her charge, picking up speed.

They had crossed by-street number two and were about to turn into the one street where they would reach the police line when, stupid fate be damned, a guy turned around the corner, ran into... - Rune didn't even know her name - and she looked up.

He saw her shoulders tense, knew the moment she understood she was in deep trouble.

“Ey, Turkish slut! Wrong street tonight!“ Behind him, of course, because those fucktwits NEVER came solo, stood two of his friends.

Rune pushed Akif from under his jacket.

“RUN!“

The eldest sister grabbed her brother's hand, broke to the left, towards the open street and darted forward. Her sister copied that move, close on her heels. The neo nazis wanted to turn, wanted to go after three scared, unarmed people, but Rune had already picked up speed and charged into them, jacket clad shoulder first, taking the impact, the toughened material giving his weight more of a brunt.

They hadn't expected that, staggering, one falling, giving Rune the out he needed to land a fist in the face of the speaker, a kick against the side of the guy on the floor and then to sprint down the street in the opposite direction. That should get them angry enough to follow him.

The police line, illuminated by the red and blue of the flashing lights, promised a hell of a lot of safety.

But this night wasn't over by a long shot and he needed to be back in the fray as soon as possible.

No safety for the heroes tonight.

Before he charged around a corner into a dark driveway, he heard the police yell, opening lines for the fleeing siblings, to welcome them to safety.

First good deed. Check.

Now he only needed to dispatch his new friends, before the police came looking

 

The idiots followed him, of course. Cowards never resisted the temptation of a three on one fight.

He could give them that and a good beating.

Or he could take the fast route of just not being here.

A pile of yellow plastic bags lay discarded in a corner, waiting for pick up by the city in the morning. It just begged to provide cover.

Dark driveway. Trash bags. Him. A love affair waiting to happen.

He just didn't have much time.

He dropped to his knees and curled up, pulling his legs as close to his body as humanly possible, and stroked his hand over his jacket again, murmuring a soft “Thurisaz” under his breath. It was sloppy. So sloppy he barely dared to believe it would work, even with the darkness and the fitting background. But his jacket turned a dirty, half transparent yellow, turning his upper body into a truly bad facsimile of a recycling bag.

He heard their feet clamoring around the corner in that moment. Behind them shouts of police men hot on their heels.

“Fuck, where is he?” They ran past him in a comfortable distance and vanished, climbing over a garden fence, the only way he could possibly have gone.

The policemen followed.

Thank the gods for working plans.

Turn jacket back to normal color. Turn it back to protective. Get back to the main street and the battle about to happen.

Fun times waiting

 

***

 

The whole situation had deteriorated considerably by the time he got back.

Flares lit the night. Someone was kicking the mirrors of cars parked along the street.

Stones flew. A shop window shattered into a thousand pieces with the sound of falling crystals.

Only minutes now.

Not even minutes.

Someone fired a blank pistol.

As one, the whole chaotic mob charged.

 

Screams echoed through the night.

And yay, were the police woefully under prepared. De-escalation, they called it.

Which worked brilliantly as a bunch of hooligans out for blood crashed into them.

 

Rune moved between them, grabbed people who had fallen. He pulled both attackers and police officers to their feet and pushed them to the sidelines, hoping they’d stay out of the way and in relative safety.

In the end only a few dozen really wanted to see blood.

There were enough police about. They only needed to regroup. Try that thing again with more people and less diplomacy on their minds.

For now? They ran.

 

On the left, obscured from view under a scaffold, three hooligans had found a victim. In the dark, charged with flickering red and white lights and the occasional blue flash from a police van that was being overturned, Rune could only guess who that person was until he uncurled long enough to raise an arm and flash the badge sewn to his uniform jacket. The head was still protected by his riot helmet, his upper body by the vest.

 

Rune reached for a cobble stone. Too good an invitation to pass.

And that was the reason Chris would always and forever be disappointed with him some way or the other. Rune would never be honourable and infallible Captain America.

He drew his arm back, reinforcing his shoulder's skin to get more traction into the throw, and hauled that thing with almost perfect aim at the back of man standing closest to him. He didn't do it to just draw his attention away from the victim.  With a sickening sound the stone made contact with the hooligan's shoulder, and he noted how much more satisfying that was with a grin.

The guy dropped like a stone, his friends now turned their attention away from their victim.

Toward him. If faced with wolves out for blood, show them you are the bigger threat.

Rune charged.

A certain someone had trained him since childhood. He had made sure Rune was swift, deadly and had no need to kill his opponent.

Hurting idiots sometimes was just a necessity. Killing sucked. His elbow checked number one in the face, dropping him immediately. Number two got a foot to his stomach and a knee to the face. He dropped, too. Number three kneeled on the ground howling with pain. After checking that both men down were breathing, he leaned over the police officer, who had curled around his left arm, protecting both the very obviously broken limb and his front.

He lashed out, when Rune turned him unto his back, only the feeble slap barely registered.

“Stop that! I'm trying to help you.” Rune flipped up the helmet, finding blood running down the man's ghastly white face. He was Rune's age, dark eyes, white skin, lips red with smeared blood. And pretty, dammit.

The gash seemed nothing more than that and the eyes that now searched what was visible of Rune's face were clear.

“Anything but the arm?”

“Ribs.”

“Bad bad ribs or just bad?”

“Just bad.” A grimace, the flicker of a grin

Rune bent down, shoving an arm under the not broken one of his charge and pulled him to his feet, ignoring the cut off scream and curse right next to his ear.

“Ok, let's get you out of here.”

He steered him down the streets, staying under the scaffolding, the visual cover too convenient to abandon. They didn't talk. The guy leaned heavily on Rune's shoulder, fighting for every breath, wincing with each step, each jostle to his arm.

The moment the it happened Rune knew immediately how he had fucked up.

He heard the sound, unmistakable since this part of the street had cleared somewhat with the ongoing charge further up front.

Leaving the third hooligan with a broken shoulder, but still conscious and pissed had been a mistake.

First it was the sound of a car engine revving up, then came the screech, the bang and the sound of metal clanging, accompanied by ripping plastic.

The police officer turned to look at him and for a moment they seemed to ponder who was going to save whom. He pulled Rune closer to the storefront, Rune pushed him to the ground, ignoring his pained scream that cut off very suddenly when he hit the ground and the impact took his breath.

Rune bent to crouch over him, already forcing his skin to harden, to contract, to just fucking turn into something able to withstand this, covering the man's body with his own.

The officer understood what he was doing the moment the scaffolding literally folded and a mix of wooden planks, metal pipes, concrete and glass came crashing down.

“NO!” Ignoring the panicked yell, Rune dropped his head to the police officer's forehead and closed his eyes to not have to see the man's mortified expression anymore. He curled his legs around the other´s, arms around his head, lifting his shoulders just enough that he wouldn't crush him and then anything and everything became a cacophony of catastrophe and a fight to not drop it all onto the injured man below him, no matter how bad the pain got.

 

And it got bad. Because no matter how tough you were and no matter if you could turn your skin to stone, something always had to give. Unlike others he could only turn materials that came in contact with his skin or his own skin itself.

Everything below the outer layer of his body was maybe not a soft and squishy as it was with others, but still kinda soft and the not so soft parts were still not immune to injury from blunt force trauma. Or metal poles hitting it at all the wrong angles. This was where his second trick came in handy.

A pair of dark, really pretty eyes kept their gaze steadily on him, wide with shock, the snow white face around them even whiter, if possible. But that may have been the dusty darkness around them. The man´s face was basically the only thing he saw.

Rune took a careful breath and something in his back crunched. Unnaturally loud in the dusty silence. His skin rippled over the remnants of his shoulder blade, and then froze into place, hard as stone. It would stay that way for several hours, impossible for him to turn back until the cells recovered naturally. But since all the vulnerable cells around the injury were now turned into some kind of inorganic substance… the good news was: no bleeding and the rock hard material would support his bones.

The bad news was his right arm, aside from the angle he held it at now, was literally useless. He could maybe drop it, but the shell his skin had become would prevent the muscles from contracting again. On the other hand, it giving in now was virtually impossible.

“What's your...” the man below him coughed, spitting a few drops of blood and a good amount of dust over his lips. Rune lifted his left hand and carefully turned the guy’s head to the side. It wasn´t a small feat that he still hovered a few centimeters above the police officer´s upper body, with the feeling of several tons pushing down on his back.

They were really snug from the waist downwards though. Which Rune absolutely did not notice.

“Hey there, snowwhite. Take it easy, ok? I need you to run a systems check on your body.”

Another cough, another few drops of blood. Nothing to worry about… yet.

“Leg hurts, ribs, my arm is… I don’t think I can still feel it… head is spinning, breathing is hard.”

Rune internally added in his own injury list.

He would still be able to get out of here, he was mostly ok. Broken ribs for sure, his lungs were ok, his head was ok, which was very good news, his left leg had been crushed by something big and those bruises he would be feeling, stone skin be thanked, nothing more.

The shoulder blade was totally broken though and so was the skin.

Open fracture.

Great, absolutely splendid.

“Ok, big guy. Here's what you need to do for me right now: don't die. Someone will get you out of here soon-ish and whatever is on top of us will not crush us till then. Alright?”

“Who are you?” Wonder reverberated in that voice, as if the man only now understood that the guy above him had just born the brunt of several hundred pounds of building materials and was not dead. And this was the moment Rune had to decide: shut up or fess up.

The Hollywood glory moment. Only this wasn't about Hollywood glory, this was about not being turned into a lab rat or put on a list and under extreme supervision. The ability to keep doing what he did or be turned into a criminal, simply by existing.

On the other hand…. “WHAT are you?” That was the real question.

“Just a guy who tries to save a few lives. Nothing more. And human, I swear. No weird alien here.” He tried with a smile, until he remembered he still wore the scarf and it was darkness around them.

“I thought I'd see you die. Fuck.” There was the panic. The moment the adrenaline left. No matter your training, the crash always came somehow. Rune stretched the fingers of his right hand, ghosted them over the bit of skin he could reach without taking weight off his left shoulder again.

“You're ok. I'm ok. I can take a good bit of damage. Don't worry. We're gonna be ok.”

“Who are you?” Rune made a decision. Perhaps he just needed a tiny bit of recognition once, or it was the fact that that guy under him had a really nice face and a really nice body and this was one hell of an intimate situation, or perhaps he just had a concussion himself. Or maybe he was just lonely.

“I'm Rune, nice to meet you…?”

“Julian, Julian Sander.” There was a pause as he caught his breath.  “It's really good to meet you, Rune. And thank you. I thought I was going to die. Thank you.”

Someone once had posted the question why some people were doing selfless things.

Well, nobody did selfless things. People who did stuff without having a visible compensation did it simply for different reasons… their reward was the feeling when they understood they had helped someone, it was the moment someone thanked them. The feeling of having saved someone itself was the reward. And that right there? The moment a man understood he was still alive because someone had protected him? That was the drug on which Rune ran.

“You're welcome. It was my absolute pleasure.” He tried to lay a smile in those words. Something reassuring. “Now let's just get you out of here, ok?”

“They'll find us soon.”

Rune shifted the position of his shoulders a bit, gaining leverage, until he could bend his back and then push upwards to dislodge the debris. It was loose, it was not that heavy, individually... he should be able to dig himself out.

“That's all nice and good. But I need to be gone by that point. Secret identity and all. I really don't want shady government…” He pushed again and something shifted. “organizations... to have my name, my face or well… ME.”

“Like SHIELD? But SHIELD's gone.”

“Not gone, scattered. Also, Hydra's still out there and I am sure they'll just infiltrate the BND or... whatever. And believe me, governments are usually not above running a few labs themselves.” Shimmying his lower body - don't think about it - and bucking again with his shoulders something started to slide on the outside of the pile and suddenly the weight became a good deal lighter.

“The reason I'm not dead and able to save your life tonight? Low profile. So, do me a favor. Forget my name, forget you were not just the lucky bastard of tonight’s game.”

Another cough, this one deeper and wetter. “Easier said than done.” There was a slur in the man's words.

He definitely needed to get him out of here, Rune thought, even as he pushed one last time and surprisingly mild yellow street light filtered in through the tarp tangled with metal and the remnants of wooden boards.

“Hey, my existence is literally in your hands, mate. Your decision.”

Now he pulled up his knees, rising fully to a crouching position.

“Ok, keep your head turned to the side.” Rune reached out and flipped down the face protector of Julian's helmet. “That stuff's gotta go.”

He pushed back, ignoring the pronounced crunch in his right shoulder. His right arm fell limp at his side, but the debris moved as he forced his upper body through and out.

And around him was shocking silence.

He heard the sirens in the distance, people either running away or towards it. But around him, right now? He was alone. The car was still there, but it was empty, the driver gone, as well as the two unconscious hooligans Rune had left on the street.

He pushed metal poles aside and then pushed to stand.

Julian, who of course had not had kept his face protected, looked up at him.

“That dust on your face or stone?” Another cough. And a smile, tiny from bloodied, cut lips.

Rune bent down, placing his left hand on the man’s face. Julian turned his head into the hand, opening his lips, as if to speak... but nothing came out, only a slight movement, as if he wanted to implore that weird contact. Rune could have told him it was both, but why bother, silent and mysterious had a lot more style.  “I'll get help. Don't move, snowwhite.”

“Why? Why snowwhite?”

“Face like snow, eyes like ebony and lips like blood? Ah, forget it. Don't move.”

Rune limped more than he climbed. His pants were shredded, as was his jacket. His cellphone though, trusty old outdoor version of something they'd built 10 years ago, was still working. They just didn't make them like that anymore.

He called the police. Dropping off Julian looking like this just wouldn’t work and the man needed an ambulance, not a trek through a semi war zone.

As a stressed operator answered, he just gave them the street, closest house number and a heads up about an officer down and in need of immediate assistance.

Ok, and that phone card would have to go as well.

Julian stared at him, down his body to his hands, while a thin trail of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. “We good?” Rune asked one last time. The man nodded, lifting a corner of his mouth to a tiny smile. “Go. They’ll be here in less than a minute.”

Rune cast a last glance over the other’s body, as if to make sure he truly would not die in the interim and only then started to limp off.

  
  
  


As he turned the corner, the first thing he needed and thankfully found, was a shop that sold clothing.

The window was long gone and technically, he was stealing, but he needed to get rid of his jacket and jeans. Also, it was a good hideout.

A police car sped down the street and around the corner with wailing sirens not even two minutes later.

 

It took a while for his skin to turn back to normal, his body barely able to spend the energy, but at the end of a thorough clean up in the shop’s bathroom, it looked ordinary human again.

Except for his right shoulder. Turned to stone as it was, it didn't move an inch.

Rune could bend the elbow, use the hand but that was about it. He´d need help with that later.

For now it would have to make do.

He grabbed a pair of jeans, a cheap jacket and left a 50 € note on the counter.

His jacket, jeans and scarf went into a dumpster down the street - dammit, he had liked that jacket - and he was back to just being an ordinary hooligan who had done nothing wrong.

He just wanted to go to his temporary apartment, grab a beer, call Chris, get to the Doctor and then fall into his bed and sleep.

Letting that third attacker off the hook had been such a dumb move. That one equated to spectacular failure. But who the hell tore down the fucking scaffolding off a 4 story house in a street full of people just because someone had broken his shoulder with a cobble stone and stolen the victim he and his cronies were beating up.

Who did that?

Who the hell was even able to still drive a car after that?

Rune pulled the cell out again and just typed a message. “Got nicked, need a Doctor, will be…”

It was at that moment another police car rounded the corner with screeching tires and Rune knew one thing: fate hated him.

Screw the message. He pressed the call button and dropped the phone into the jacket’s pocket.

The car stopped, three doors were pushed open at once and three police officers came at him, hands on their weapons.

The call connected. A hard voice, strong, with a touch of worry in its depths answered

“Yes?”

“Police! Don’t, move. Get on your knees. Put your hands up. You are arrested.”

He didn't wait for them to repeat it. His teeth clenched as he struggled down on his knees and put his hands up.

A muffled curse, then the sound of a disconnected call.

It should give his pick up enough of an idea on where to find him.

 

 

 

 

                             

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Maybe, Rune thought, as he sat alone, handcuffed and in considerable pain on a plastic chair, today was his lucky day.

He had been lucky, able to ride in the back of a police car, not a van packed with hooligans.

Had been lucky again when it turned out processing would take hours.

Since then, two hours had passed, and it put him t minus 5 hours until his shoulder would turn back to normal mortal flesh and he would be in big trouble.

Nothing to be truly worried about yet. As long as he remained seated, as he had been for more than an hour now, nobody would get the idea he needed his leg looked at.

And as long as nobody tried to drag him to a hospital, he could live with being booked for disturbance, calling Nazi slogans, destruction of property and - perhaps- looting.

He preferred not to, but stuff happened sometimes. Handcuffs were a sad, but inevitable fact of life when you were the type of person who actually tried to always be where the trouble happened.

Every attempt at a conversation directed at him had been cut of with non committal grunts until they gave up. He didn't want to be remembered in this setting. Some had cast him glances, checked out the traces of dirt and concrete dust, he hadn’t managed to get off.

Like weird badges of honor, in their eyes, signs he had wrought destruction.

Not the kind of crowd, he sought approval from.

Christian Jaeger on the other hand….  

Chris would be pissed, would probably throw a tantrum.

Another fact of his existence, Rune just had to live with.

  


***

 

When they came for him, it was an officer in his 50s, relatively tall, heavy set. His skin was the unhealthy pale of someone who had worked through the night and ran only on coffee and duty.

"Andreas Michels?"

Rune stood, steadied himself, and did his best to neither appear drunk nor hurt. He could live through an alcohol testing, as long, as he stayed away from drawing blood and hospitals.

"Mr. Michels, somebody is here to pick you up. Please follow me."

Rune eyed the man, recognition and relief dawning. He studied the way he slightly favored his left side, the way his hand rested in a deceptively open, harmless position.

"Well, we shouldn't let them wait, should we?"

The man turned and headed down the hallway. He did not open the handcuffs, which probably was security protocol with likely violent hooligans.

The walls of  the hallways they were walking were painted a really ugly septic green, the floors old enough to have been polished to shining smoothness by hundreds of feet.

It was depressing. Combined with the smell of dirty people, sweat, beer, piss and anger it was downright disgusting. The violence didn't just end on the street. Violence was a mindset, not an occurrence. It didn't just happen.

It crawled around him. Provocation yelled from an office. People in handcuffs catcalling a female officer whose skin was just a shade too dark. The Nazi stanza of the national anthem screamed one story above them.

The man in front of him tensed. His shoulders drawn up, a tight pull around his mouth. He was really good at being inconspicuous, at feigning nonchalance, faking normality and copying another person.

But Rune saw.

It was the small things. The way he moved, recognizable only to someone who had grown up around him, who had watched for signals translated in fights for years.

Someone who recognized the subdued anger for what it was.

Who knew the stories.

He followed the man in blind faith past the offices, around a corner and out the door, into a car. Injured and handcuffed that was not something done lightly.

He didn't have the slightest doubt though.

A police officer, for one, wouldn't lead him out of the building to begin with.

And the people who were able to pull off something like that and might want to harm him were so few, the chance it was one of them was negligible. Also, he knew Chris like he didn’t know anybody else, bar his twin sister.

Rune let his body sink into the passenger seat of the car, finally allowing himself the weakness to wince as he lifted his leg inside.

The man who took the drivers seat stilled and took the moment to inspect his passengers body.

"How bad?"

Rune shut his mouth and shook his head.

"Drive. Let's get out of here."

Only when they had safely left the street and turned into a main street that led away from the inner city, did he relax.

 

 ***

 

Jaeger parked the car on a river bank parking space that was virtually deserted this time of night.

He took his sweet time, taking off the uniform, replacing it with more inconspicuous clothing, jeans and a sweatshirt.

Only then did  he open the passenger door and Rune looked into the face of a man in his early thirties, dark brown hair tousled, dark eyes hard and worried, jaw clenched. He reached for Rune's hand with surprising gentleness, and with great care, so as not to jostle his right arm, picked the lock to take off the cuffs.

"Alright. How bad is it?" Rune let his gaze sweep over his adopted father and tried a wry grin.

"How much trouble am I in?"

Chris snorted and then he finally answered with a grin of his own.

“That depends entirely on your level of  “That was worth it.”   

"That was absolutely worth it. Saved a few people."

The older crouched and reached for the leg - just as the other way round, it was virtually impossible to fool someone who knew him that well - and started to open the shoelaces, only to be stopped by Rune.

"If you take that off, I won’t be able to get into that shoe again." Rune could have tried for diplomacy, but Chris had this uncanny ability to know whenever Rune tried to sugarcoat stuff.

“I might have had to shield a guy when a bit of scaffolding dropped on us and…” best to get it all out at once. “I need a doctor."

Chris tilted his head, looked him over, then back up at his face.

"So, that was you."

"Yeah, that was me."

"Did he see you?" Rune shook his head, a move he regretted right away, when the hardened patch around his injury tore on his normal skin with an audible crunch.

He thought he imagined a flash worry on the other’s face before Chris got up and got a bottle of sports drink from the trunk to hand to Rune.

"The Doctor is expecting us. Are you good with the passenger seat for now or do you want to lie down?"

Rune curled himself back into the seat and stretched his legs slowly, nursing the bottle.

He absolutely did not imagine the flash of worry when Chris closed the door and stuffed a travel pillow between Rune's head and the door.

"Get some rest, kid."

"Thanks, mommy." Rune murmured with a smile of relief and maybe a touch of appreciation. He was a big boy, but he was not above accepting care, when he was injured and hurting.

The older man only scoffed as he took the drivers seat again.

“And thanks for coming for me.” Rune added, and it earned him a disbelieving look.

“No, seriously, Chris... I'd thought you would just be pissed at me and… we talked about this. I know you don’t exactly like it. I did it anyways. "

"Hey. No." Chris cut him off. His eyes locked on something invisible in the water of the river or another time altogether.  

“Rune… listen. This is what you were born to do, you have the abilities to do it and the mind set. You weren't stupid out there. You saved lives.  I know what you can do. I taught you half of it.

I may harass you to be careful because I have seen too many people die, but heck, I've been in business for 70 years. Let me tell you, some just can't be stopped from running into danger on behalf of others. Just don't be stupid about it. That's all I ever asked. Maybe next time, don't go in alone, you idiot, but you did good.”

Rune slid deeper into the seat, took another pull of the bottle and closed his eyes.

"I left an active opponent in my back.  That was stupid… I could have sworn, he was out. That whole thing with the scaffolding only happened because I... they were kicking that guy to death and I had to do something, get him out. I thought the third Nazi was out. I had broken his damn shoulder. Guess he wasn't."

Chris turned the car back onto the main street leading to the Autobahn and picked up speed.

"Just tell me the thing from start to finish. I'll think of a verbal dress down while you're at it."

He looked over and he smiled, an honest to god true smile. One of those things he wore way too rarely, weighed down by too much responsibility. Rune would have loved to take some of it off his shoulders, only Chris would never let him. He had been a father to him ever since the day he had rescued him, a scared and traumatized toddler, from a secret GDR lab after the fall of the regime. Him and several others. And he just seemed unable to make the switch to become partners with any of them.

"Ok. I arrived by train around noon. Thought it would be a good idea to mingle beforehand… find the people at the center. The ones who were gonna start violence." As Rune talked the dust in his throat started to loosen, gracing him with a horrible taste in his mouth.

And the more questions Jaeger asked, the more he took everything apart, every decision, every move by the police, Rune, the hooligans, the more Rune relaxed.

This was home.

Jaeger would disagree, as would Anna and Nin, but to Rune, it wasn't pancakes on Sunday morning or movie night. It was listening to Jaeger's tactical mind analyzing complicated situations.

When Jaeger was analyzing a combat situation, all was well, everybody had survived and Rune could let go.

  
***  


Jaeger turned off the Autobahn and onto a rest stop off the A61 half an hour outside Cologne. Rune didn't stir, so fast asleep, Jaeger might have been tempted to check for breathing had this not been exactly what he aimed for.

The elder grabbed a blanket from the back seat and spread it over the man on the passenger seat.

Rune might think, Jaeger didn't notice the way his skin pulled tight over his cheekbones or how he favoured his right or the slight limp…..

On the day, hell froze over.

He brushed his fingers over the younger man's forehead, checking his temperature, brushing back the short hairs. Rune would always, in a way, be his child.

“Boy, you would've given DumDum a heart attack…”

With his eyes on his passenger, he dialed the one person, he would actually trust with one of his kids.

“I'm bringing him in, he's pretty banged up.” The thought alone to not come for him when he needed help was so alien, Jaeger shook his head, as he sped off the resting stop again.

“How the hell am I supposed to know. He got crushed by scaffolding. His leg is messed up and he locked his right shoulder. I'm a carpenter, Elisabeth, not a doctor.”

The laugh on the other side was clear and infectious, just as he remembered it.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning:  
> Everything.  
> Honestly, if you are triggered by the mention of Holocaust, concentration camps, the Shoa, racism, medical experimentation, incarceration: 
> 
> Please treat this chapter with utmost care. 
> 
> I mean that!
> 
> Also: I need someone who knows about readability layout editing on AO3. I´m at a complete loss.

Rune awoke with a start and the first thing to really register was pain - again. Followed shortly by the rustling of magazine pages being turned.

He knew he was in a small private clinic 2 hours out of Cologne. He knew the feel of hospital linen on his skin and the smell. His mind supplied him with the knowledge that his leg was in a cast and wrapped in cooling packs… whatever good they did, hours after the injury. And he knew, his shoulder hurt like a bitch. On that note, his whole left side hurt like a bitch.

He knew, his mouth felt as if a small furry creature had crawled in and died there. Which told him, they had put him under general anesthetic. His body was funny like that.

He didn't quite remember how he had ended up here. After relating his story to Chris, he must have fallen asleep. Very heroic.

The rustling stopped and a callused hand was placed on his forehead. Again.

“Hey. Easy.” A cup was placed against his lips and Rune took a few careful sips to get rid of the dryness.

“Seriously. Anesthesia? What have I done to deserve this?”

“The Doctor had to tap your leg to release pressure. You have a hairline fracture in your shin, contusions down to the muscle tissue and most likely a few pulled tendons. Oh, also mild nerve damage. This is what will hurt most tomorrow and in the days to come. More problematic was the open fracture of your shoulder blade and the cascade fracture of your ribs. Cleaning the wound alone took long enough to warrant putting you under.” Chris bent over the bed, a refilled cup in his hands and murder in his eyes.

“Next time, tell me how serious it is, god dammit, Andreas!”

Rune took a deep gulp of water and then let his head drop back on the pillow. He regretted it immediately, despite the second pillow cushioning his shoulder.

“I didn't…” A cough to clear his throat. “I didn't think it was that bad.”

He closed his eyes, wondering how something that had hurt so little beforehand could hurt so hellishly now.

The answer was simple: Locking the wound caused extensive tissue damage around it.

“Can I have more painkillers?”

“Later. The Doctor said, you need to wait two hours. She already hooked you up to a bottle earlier.”

Chris sat again and reached for his magazine. A faint glow of morning filtered into the room. Aside from that the only illumination came from the deep yellow glow of a reading lamp.

“How bad… “Another cough, the taste of dust in his mouth. “How bad was the night? Is there anything in yet?” Chris glanced up from the magazine article - _Captain America and the fall of America - Why?_

“Forty injured. Two serious. A few broken bones. Several thousand of Euros damage.”  

“How is he?” Rune didn't doubt Chris had checked up on the police officer. If only to give Tin something to do; their tech and computer wiz, his abilities concentrated on everything that worked with electricity, who, whenever he didn't get something to do, caused trouble. Though, since he usually didn't get caught it was not him who got in trouble per se. But someone did.  And with something like the internet on his hands Swiss Banks, American politicians, SHIELD or the Chancellor were always a scary possibility

Of course, Chris had checked. As he listed quite the impressive list of injuries, Rune listened with his eyes closed, actually smiling when the worst was the shattered arm, a bruised lung and a concussion. Julian would be fine.

“Happy?” Chris opened his magazine for the third time now.

“Yes."

“Good. Go back to sleep.”

“I can't, Chris. It hurts.”

Rune watched his adopted father as he peeked over the magazine, disbelief on his face.

“Rune… you can sleep at any time and any place. I've have witnessed it. You fell asleep with a broken jaw once.”

Truth was, Rune was too hyped up. Usually Chris’ presence was enough to settle him in unfamiliar surroundings, but his mind kept playing the sound of metal giving in, the need to do something a constant flicker in his mind. So, he concentrated on something that would get Chris to talk.

“Why do you think, he did it? Cap, I mean.”

Chris turned a page and heaved a soft sigh of defeat. “Because it needed to be done.”

His face was hidden behind the paper, but Rune knew him well enough, knew just enough of his story to know, he was as convinced as he sounded, and with reason. Despite that, he kept poking.

“They say, he lost it. That the strain of everything was too much and he got paranoid delusions, and that's why he crashed SHIELD.”

Rune had grown up with stories of a man more honourable and trustworthy than any other. He might not believe the rumors, but the only ones who knew the truth didn't talk.

Not even Tin had been able to unearth anything, besides, of course, the obvious: terabytes of

classified data on the internet. And Hydra.

The answer was calm and collected, no worry in his voice at all. “I don't think Cap is actually able to “lose it”. He's very passionate and has one hell of a temper, but no matter how emotional he gets about something, below that is always the coolly calculating man that in case of doubt falls back on his principles.”

Chris folded the magazine, resigned acceptance on his face that he wouldn't get to finish the article for now. Instead, he handed Rune another glass of water.

“Have you ever seen him that angry?”

Chris took a seat on the side of Rune's bed and watched the younger man drink.

This room might be tiny, but there was privacy and good medical care. Which was exactly, why Chris had invested in a friend’s private clinic a few years back. That and the fact she had some interesting abilities herself. He saw it as his job to keep up with interesting people, only he never did anything with it.

Now he stared down at his boy, the thick bandage that wound around his right shoulder, the naked torso that made him look so strangely vulnerable, the IV line, waiting to feed him more pain killers. Rune never should have gone in a situation like this alone. He never should have had the need to hide who he was and what he was doing from the people they were helping.

Earlier, he had wanted to just shake sense into the kid for telling a stranger who he was, for leaving a trail, for wanting to be an honest to god hero and the urge was still there. But he also understood. He had known people like this before.

When Rune had been younger, whenever he had been sick and often times, when he couldn't sleep from nightmares, Chris had told him stories.

“I have never told you the beginning, have I?”

Rune shook his head, but his attention spiked.

“You always said it was too dark a story and I was too young.”

“Yeah and look at you, you look like 18 and are 24 and you still look like a baby to me.” Rune might have laughed at that, but they had tangled more than once about Chris’ inability to accept the fact that the kids were not kids any longer.

Now the older man reached over and took the glass, filled it up again and then took a seat in the chair beside the bed.

 

  
***

 

“In forty three,” Chris’ eyes narrowed, his gaze fixed on the wall, as if he actually saw things in the way the reading  lamp cast shadows on the white. “I was in Buchenwald.  

We called it the mountain. The camp on a hill. From up there we had this stunning view of the countryside.

It was weird - such a beautiful area and it harbored such a horrible place.

They had arrested me on charges of civil unrest. I guess, being a member of the communist party and publicly opposing the NSDAP was not really appreciated.” His soft, ironic snort held a wealth of memories and pain.

“Actually in hindsight, was kinda funny, it made me a political prisoner, instead of possibly sending me to the gas chambers.

They hadn't started interning people of mixed heritage yet. And since only my mother was Jewish…

That phase did not start until ’44. But, because of my “mixed” blood, Braun, the leader of the medical research division at Buchenwald, pulled me in. He wanted a control subject, see how my inferior blood reacted to some serum he was testing on the politicals.

They were Aryan after all, their genetics pure. Only our,” with a startled pause, he corrected himself, finding only now, he was not included in that group, in that context, “…their... ideology had gotten them to the KZ.” His voice dripped irony, as much as it had spelled “inferior” without any inflection, simply accepting the cultural reading as only someone who had lived it could

“Braun had gotten a sample of every group of prisoners in Buchenwald. I think it was the only camp that actually housed pretty much everything Hitler wanted gone, aside from American POWs.

We were in a minor side camp, farther up the mountain. Gypsies, politicals, me, another “half-blood”, Jews, three or four Russian soldiers.” His gaze dropped for a moment, rested on his fingers that had wrapped around each other. He released them with very deliberate care before his eyes went to the wall again.

“The Russians and the politicals basically formed the backbone of the resistance in the camp. We were the best connected, the best organized. The peak of the crop. We also provided the backbone of Braun's research. He didn't actually want the others to survive. He only wanted them for the sake of scientific method.”

 

_No, you don't understand. The results need to be reproducible.And you need to be able to follow its trace and the effects._

_We are scientists. You can't just inject people with different blood with different samples. The serum might react to a gypsy completely different than it would to someone of true Aryan heritage._

“It was all very wrong and very stupid and we were convinced it was just a ploy to… to torture us.” He rubbed his eyes at that. For a moment the weight of all of what he was not telling settled like a blanket on him.

Rune understood. He heard in those last neutral words maybe everything unsaid. He didn't need to know what that torture entailed. He had seen the scars. He had read up on it. Because he was stupid, had been young and from the moment, he had known the man he idolized had been in a concentration camp had wanted to know what that meant. He had wished he hadn't right after.

Now he watched the man, decades later, take a deep breath and with a last rub over his eyes, pull himself together, just like that, with years of experience in not appearing that affected for the sake of others.

“Well, what did we know,” he continued, “he was a member of Hydra and Schmidt had him testing reworks of Erskine's serum on us.”

 

_We are changing the face of humanity forever. The work we are doing is of utmost importance!_

_Schmidt does not fool around. If we fail we will regret it, of that he'll make sure._

 

“Some died. We heard their screams all through the night. The serum sure did something to them.

I once caught a glimpse of a body that just had... I wouldn't call it disintegrated. It was still in one piece, only, it wasn't a human looking piece anymore.

Anders, a political, gained telepathy, I think. Or he just started hearing voices out of the blue.

He went mad and ran into the fence just to shut them up. One of the Roma got a hell of a lot stronger, but they killed him to dissect him as soon as they found out.

And me… yeah... then there was me.

I was dubbed a total failure because literally nothing happened. I didn't die and I didn't change in any discernable way.

And then, that night my barrack mates held me down, pressing rolled up shirts to my mouth to stop me from screaming while my body.”

Closing his eyes, he took a couple of deep breathes, his skin turning a shade paler at the memory alone.

“I don't know how to describe it. It felt like my body actually dissolved and then it put itself back together. My skin started to take on the color of whoever was within my line of sight, several different ones at once at some point.

The others were spooked, they completely freaked out on my behalf, but not once, not ONCE did they leave me alone or tell on me. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to run to the guards and get them to shoot me, just to make it stop.

But the others didn't let me.

Had you asked me a day prior, how much pain I could take, I would have said, bring it on. I was convinced, by that point, I could take everything, anybody could dish.

Guess what? I have never been so wrong in my life.”

 

_Christian. Hold on. Hold on! You will get through this._

_Jaeger, come on! Just a drip of water. Drink a bit. Yes, very good. You're doing great. We're not leaving you, Jaeger. No way._

_We will see this through, you hear me Chris? Scream, they can't hear you. We got you, mate. We got you._

 

“But my comrades, they made me pull through. They pushed me to my feet in the morning, made sure, I appeared at the roll call, propping me up, shielding me, they gave me part of their rations, fighting for my survival like I was... like I mattered. They were scared out of their minds, we all were, but they didn't fear me, you know? They feared for me.

The bonds you form in situations like that...

I mattered to them and in the end that made me pull through. And it made me own what Braun had done to me. Use it.”

 

Rune hadn't looked away, not once. He was convinced, Chris knew that, though he hadn't once acknowledged it, his eyes transfixed on a blank white spot high up on the wall.

He finally dared to ask, the question only presenting itself now.

“Is that why you rescued us? So we wouldn't be alone?”

Chris face morphed into a frown, but he didn't look down, not even then.

“I rescued you and the others because you were a bunch of babies in a secret laboratory about to be shipped off to Russia, Rune.” Maybe there was little smile lodging itself in the corners of the older man's mouth.

“And I kept you, because, while you were costing me my last nerve and my body was barely able to keep up with repairing all the grey hairs you were giving me, you were a bunch of little miracles and as annoying as all of you still are, you made me love you. It has nothing to do with the past and everything to you with who you and your siblings are, ok?”

Rune's heart skipped a beat.  Jaeger usually was very sparse with declarations of love. He tended to play everything close to his heart, so every time, he actually let any of them see his true colors, it was all the more special for it being so starkly honest.

“Ok. We love you, too, you know?”

Chris closed his eyes and now the smile grew. “I know, Andreas. Believe me, the fact that you call me to get you out of trouble when you know, I will give you hell for it, speaks volumes.”

“Will you get me a burger later?”

“Maybe. If you're a good kid.”

“Ok, Papa.”

Chris froze, looked down. And when he saw the look on Rune's face, he went on, jumping at the chance to change the subject and direct his gaze back to the white, spotless ceiling.

“I once managed to turn my skin orange. I have never managed since to change it to something unnatural, but right in the beginning, when we were trying to find out what was happening, once, I turned it orange. That was weird. You look at your hands and they glow like a pair of yellow prunes…

Anyways…

What I actually learned was how to turn into one of the officers.

That was our grand plan. Take out one of the officers, make me look like him, steal his uniform and then sneak out and make my way to the Russian lines and tell them about the camp, us, what the Nazis were doing, about Hydra. We were so naive. We really, truly believed communism was the future and we were the heralds of a new world without injustice and they would of course help us.

In the name of freedom and a chance at survival for all of us, I learned to turn into the most sadistic asshole I had ever known.”

His fingers started to rub together, it was subtle, but the sound regular, like heartbeat.  A tic and, in its simplicity and regularity, a very telling one. It was exactly the kind of thing, people did, to calm themselves. Rune saw. He didn't comment on it.

 

“Weber was a monster. He didn't care for taking over the world, didn't believe in the superiority of some to rule the rest. What he believed in was pushing others down, cutting them down, to feast on their pain and sorrow and suffering.

There are nights…. “

 

_Admit it, Jaeger, you missed me. You little sub-human bitch. Shall we find out, what it takes to make you cry?_

_Some can take more than others. They are just better. But you wouldn't know, would you? All are equal to you communist pigs. Let us test this. Let me show you, how far beneath the soles of my feet you will crawl, begging for mercy._

 

“There still are nights, when I dream of his voice in my ear, whispering with unadulterated glee. “Don't you have a little daughter, Jaeger? Don't you want her to see Daddy not cry when he's bleeding?”

And by God,” Chris eyes closed at that, his mouth bracketed by deep white lines, his fingers, if only for a moment, tangling, twisting, as if looking for something to hold onto.  

“I loved killing him.

He was my first. I broke his windpipe with the sleeve of my prisoner’s jacket.

I watched him gurgle and panic his way to death and I can't even muster the tiniest bit of regret. It makes me... well, not exactly happy, but it calms me.”

Now, Christian looked down, away from the ceiling and back at Rune, a wry expression on his face. Rune smiled a sad, lost smile, a mirror of the elder's pain and a newfound insecurity that the man, who had always only protected them, to the point of smothering them, could be so unabashedly blood thirsty.

But then, if he really had had a daughter….

“Did he get her? Your daughter?” At that, Christian's los expression turned into a smile, a coldly cruel, beautiful thing, reminiscent of the death of a monster.

“No. No one got to her. Ever. They tried to take her away as a second degree half blood, but...” Their eyes met. Rune smiled and decided that no, it was not creepy.

He might just understand, he did not really know this man. But he instinctively knew, should anybody ever try to take him, or one of the others, this was who they would be meeting. There would be blood. But it was easy to understand why Chris shied away from endangering anybody. He defined protective on a whole new level there.

“So, you did what? Take his uniform and walked away?”

 

_No, you need to pull back your shoulders, Christian. You're not an inmate anymore. Weber doesn't shy from anybody. He scares them and he knows it._

_Scared them, Maibach. Past tense._

_My God… that was weird. You sounded just like him there. Jaeger, that was beyond scary._

 

“Yes. I just walked out of there. The change was not perfect. I had had maybe a week to practice, but nobody cared. It was October, dusk came early, I just left work one day… and that was, what it was to them: work, like I had walked into the wood shop in my previous life. And I just didn't come back.”

He paused, let his eyes sweep over the elegantly cream colored walls of the room, stopping only to skirt over anything disturbing the even surface, a picture, a light switch, until his gaze landed on the bed again.

“And I was free. It was so easy. We had thought of me taking the body with me, but I had nowhere to hide it, so… the others disposed of it in the out-houses and we hoped that nobody would notice, that they would brand him a deserter and only search for him on the outside.

It's shallow, but the first thing I did was take his motorbike to the next town, walk into a bakery and buy a piece of apple pastry. I hadn't had one in months. It's weird what you crave when you can't have it. I needed apple pastry so bad. Needed it to convince myself, I was out. I had survived. I was not a ghost, but someone who had a right to this world, the one that had shunned us, too. So, I ate a piece of apple pastry.

And then, I drove east.

That's it, that's the great story of how I became what I am. Which is actually not at all that great or heroic.”

Rune adjusted his position with a wince, not protesting when Christian shoved his hands under his upper body and helped him, fluffed his pillow, straightened the blanket.

“But how did you meet Captain America? How… I dunno, how was he like?”

“You should sleep, Rune. ”

“I can't. It really fucking hurts.”

“You don't want to, you mean.”

Rune averted his gaze, he didn't give a damn if it looked guilty.

“I feel like I have enough nervous energy to jump out of bed and go catch a train, in the literal sense catch a train. I can't sleep. I'm beat and I don't know if I could lift my arm right now. But I can't sleep. I'm still running on Adrenalin. And until that works out of my system sleep is a pious hope at best. Sorry. I don't mind if you wanna go lie down. A man your age needs rest.”

“Octogenarian jokes? Really?” Chris patted the younger’s hand and sat again. “I see exactly what you did there, kid.”

“Does it work?” Rune did very deliberately not laugh. He’d had broken ribs before and he remembered vividly how much any pressure hurt.

“No? Did it ever?” Christian had no reason not to laugh.

“Chris?”

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry for what they did to you.” Stark honesty colored those words, a deep felt pain for the man he considered his father. And Jaeger answered in kind, with gentleness and sadness in his eyes, a reminder of old horrors, tempered by younger joy

“Don't be. It was a long time ago. And you had nothing to do with it.” Christian touched his hand to Rune's again. “It's over and if it means I could save anyone’s life down the line? It was worth it. Which includes you by the way. And I am not sorry.”

Runed turned his hand and closed his fingers around the other's.

“I'll ask her if you can get the next batch of painkillers early. You need rest for your healing factor to work.”

This time the younger did not protest. He let him go and with a soft “Oh hell.” closed his eyes, trying to dispel the images, Christian's words had conjured.  

Of course, numbers and list and shady organizations assigning numbers to people for the sake of “oversight”, of keeping them under control. Of course, he'd had an aversion. It made so much sense.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since someone actually asked, if I was posting the next chapter soon. And seemed to like it so far  
> Here it is.  
> Btw, seriously, kudos or comments are love.  
> It´s all that keeps us going around here and nothing is sadder than nobody giving a damn.  
> Serious critique is welcome and encouraged, just please, let me know.
> 
> The term Gypsy refers to someone who comes from a family of travelers without a fix place of living. Not a member of the Roma people. The wording has been chosen intentionally.
> 
> Special thanks to sahnequark for the help and the commas, evil little beasties that they are!

When Rune awoke for the second time, the pale light of an autumn afternoon sun filtered through the curtains.

The pain rolling through his body was bearable. The shoulder was pulsing slowly with each heartbeat, dull, soft pain that was nothing but a warning to be gentle and not overdo it.

His leg on the other hand prickled with pinprick needle stabs that made his muscles twitch and cramp.

It took him several minutes to maneuver his body into a sitting position and several more to actually make it to the bathroom. His body, as he checked it in the mirror, looked like it had been hit by a truck. Bruises curled around Runes right shoulder, snuck down the arm and his rib cage – that alone was rare an enough occurrence. That they were still visible hours after the injury told him all he needed to know about the severity of the injury.

He did not heal like Jaeger, with a shift of cells, knitting almost immediately. Rune, as with his ability, was either less able to shift or, as he preferred to think, more stable, less fluid.When Rune awoke for the second time the pale light of an autumn afternoon sun filtered through the curtains.

The pain rolling through his body was bearable. The shoulder was pulsing slowly with each heartbeat, dull, soft pain that was nothing but a warning to be gentle and not overdo it.

His leg on the other hand prickled with pinprick needle stabs that made his muscles twitch and cramp.

It took him several minutes to maneuver his body into a sitting position, and several more to actually make it to the bathroom. His body, as he checked it in the mirror, looked like it had been hit by a truck. Bruises curled around Rune's right shoulder, snuck down the arm and his rib cage – that alone was a rare enough occurrence.

He did not heal like Jaeger, with a shift of cells knitting almost immediately. Rune, with his ability, was either less able to shift or, as he preferred to think, more stable, less fluid.

He simply needed to rest and not move and run around, a few hours of sleep usually did the trick just fine.

As it had this time too, in a way. His ribs did not shift around with each breath anymore. Neither did his shoulder blade. That was the good news.

The one big bruise told him locking down the wound last night had gifted him with tissue damage from hell. Yay.

That would take days to mend on top of his normal healing time.

And then there was the leg.

After peeling away the cast that stabilized his knee Rune sat for a whole minute staring at the Verdun battlefield re-enactment that was his thigh, knee and ankle.

It had not actually hurt that much last night.

Now it was an array of several colors not normally found on human skin. It was also grotesquely swollen from knee to ankle and looked like it had been crushed by a lot more than just a disconnected jumble of tumbling poles and wood.

And About every five minutes the muscles started to spasm, a feeling akin to high voltage current pulling everything in opposing directions.

In other words: it hurt like a bitch.

Someone had dropped off his emergency duffle with a choice of clothing. They all had those packed away at the emergency apartments - which was just a fancy term for hidey holes in several major German cities, really.

As Rune stumbled back to his bed, sweat pants clutched in one hand…no way in hell was he able to pull these on standing up... it occurred to him again how elaborate all of it was:

Jaeger had built a network of safe places for decades. He owned a god damn former Russian military installation deep in the Brandenburg forests for god's sake… he just didn't use it. Not the way it was meant to be used.

Instead he hid, himself and others.

Rune could name 5 people able and willing to do something more than just blend in and help from the shadows from the top of his head. And several others who kept a lower profile, blending in.

The Doctor and her ability to sense and counteract anything that originated in an unusual genetic expression, no matter if illness or ability, fit perfectly into her chosen surroundings.

Tin worked for the world's biggest cybertech company in Munich as a security programmer. Rune never not found that funny.

Toby, who had a strange, yet unobtrusive, ability of almost complete heat resistance worked as a -absolutely shocking- firefighter in Berlin.

And then there were himself, his twin Anna, Mataeusz, Nin and Jaeger.

Mataeusz was a Polish born gypsy with staggering agility and acrobatic ability. It wasn't just physical. He had an absolute sense of his body, his surroundings and knew exactly where he would be in the next 5 seconds.

If that was still natural and unenhanced, Rune didn't trust nature anymore. Building cats that looked like humans was really not fair. Not a surprise to anyone, Matti worked at a circus while moonlighting as a vigilante. It was all very cliché, although, since Matti channeled the great classics of Robin Hood and Zorro so perfectly, it just fit.

Nin was a gentle little fey of Asian descent, one of her parents had probably been Chinese or Vietnamese, but nobody really knew. Like Anna and Rune, she had come from a secret Eastern German laboratory.

Nin was perhaps the one most burdened. She read people with a touch, feeling their memories, their “core” as she put it. Unsurprisingly she also had the most secluded occupation. She played lady of the house at Jaeger's sprawling former military property and worked as a freelance journalist and author of pretty successful romance novels.

But whenever she left her lonely hideout and went out with them, someone who shouldn't be allowed to roam free vanished off the streets.

Rune would have sworn every oath she smelled predators and monsters.

And then there was Anna. Anna appeared absolutely normal. She worked as a sound technician for one of the big German TV channels. She loved horses and movies. In her free time she sometimes helped with a project for disadvantaged youth and lifted cars.

She was tougher than any of them, except Rune maybe, and definitely stronger. Rumor had it she once visited the father of one of her boys, a big, brutish Turkish boxer, and talked him into never hitting one of his kids or his wife again, ever.

Rune just happened to know that his 5’’4 sister beat the guy to within an inch of his pride with the standing warning that she could and would drop by again, if she got the slightest whiff of one his family members being hurt.

He was so fucking proud of her.

Jaeger had blown a gasket.

Then there was Rune, student of international politics and comparative historical studies, avid participant and regular guest in all old linguistics lectures, presently writing his master's thesis “The hero narrative in the service of ruling powers – a historical comparison on the examples of Captain America and Beowulf.”, amateur hero and your friendly neighborhood freak in his spare time. Also: able turn anything he touched into whatever he wanted.

And Jaeger.

National hero that nobody knew about.

Who spent his time pulling people from burning cars, inhuman dictatorships, evil laboratories and general hardship … and who refused to admit to anybody that any of them existed. Rune had always had trouble truly understanding why.

Until last night.

Now he did.

He just didn't agree.

Slowly lowering himself back on the bed, after downing almost a whole bottle of water someone – Jaeger – had helpfully left on the nightstand, he fluffed the pillow under his injured shoulder and went through everything Jaeger had said last night.

Rune had seen the tattoo on the inner side of his right wrist countless times already. A number with a discolored later addition of “HC” in front. Even as a child he had known it meant that someone had branded his father once, that they had incarcerated him, and hurt him.

 

But times were different now.

Now more so than ever.

SHIELD had fallen, Hydra had fractured, secrets been thrown into the light of day that overturned much of what the world had believed. People had been exposed against their will.

Tin, accompanied by some of his hacker friends, had spent frantic nights pulling electronic copies of old SSR files pertaining to Jaeger off the web. None of them had ever been more glad for his paranoia with their identities and existence than in that moment.

So, Jaeger had been right about that.

But now the world broke down in insecurity. The big dream of benevolent heroes protecting the innocent had evaporated in the image of a creepy octopus.

And those able to help still hid, as if the fact they were other, maybe greater, was something shameful.

Jaeger had never forbidden their extracurricular activities. He only had drilled the fear of god – him – into their skulls should their existence come to light.

He himself played a game of innuendo and catch me if you can with the police and SHIELD, never leaving enough evidence to conclude something had not been quite normal.

And wasn't that the dilemma of their existence?

 

***

Rune pondered ringing the nurse to let them know he was awake.

The clinic was perfect. They just declared themselves eccentric private patients and nobody blinked an eye at the fact he had slept – a quick glance at the clock above the door – 11 hours without anybody checking on him and only the Doctor herself treating him. The downside was that when you were in, you were in, and you weren't leaving until she decided you were allowed to.

That alone was reason to talk to her. Maybe she'd let herself be sweet talked into handing him over to Anna's custody, who was a way less strict nurse maid.

He rang and plastered a smile on his face.

He only needed to convince her everything was shiny. It was just bumps and bruises and he was as fresh as the young morning.

The smile faltered as soon as the Doctor entered, her tall, slender frame - almost as tall as Rune's 1,80m- wrapped in her ever present white coat, her chestnut hair wrapped into her usual severe ponytail, but her exotically beautiful face, all angles, cheekbones and slanted eyes, drawn with worry.

He pushed himself up with a wince, the charade of “It doesn't hurt, let me out” fallen apart on the spot.

“What's wrong, Doc?”

Without a word she grabbed the remote off the table by the window.

Her other hand was already pointing at him, her expression accepted no resistance.

“You, stay where you are. I'm not yet convinced you haven't sustained permanent damage.”

The TV came to life, pictures of yesterday's street battles flickering over the screen, accompanied by a concerned commentator's voice and counted all the ways things went wrong when hooligans could take to the streets like that.

The put up concern changed to muted excitement as he switched to the next news item.

“Now for the extraordinary footage caught on camera of the truly miraculous rescue of a police officer from a vile attack by Hooligans and a horrible accident…”

Rune's mouth opened before the commentator had even finished speaking.

He wanted to say something intelligent, but all he could muster faced with the woman in front of him, her worry, her fear, and possibly the sure knowledge of Jaeger's fury, was a drawn:

“Shit, no…..”

***

The TV did cut to grainy footage shot with a cell phone camera not made for the conditions in that street.

The only source of light were the burning flares and bengals, too bright to offer any good lighting.

A red sheen overlaid everything, smoke obscured the details.

Yet it was clear the three neo nazis had specifically targeted the one police officer staying behind, hindered by a van at his back. They had grabbed him, dragged him back into the shadow of that same van and started to beat him, as if he was a punching bag and not a living human being.

When he fell, they simply started to kick him instead.

They dragged him down the street, far behind the lines, laughed, hooted, and their officer´s scream when they shattered his arm with coldblooded intent made Rune's blood boil.

He tried to move, his leg forgotten.

It barely held his weight at the moment if he stood carefully and now he immediately tumbled back with a vile curse. The Doctor was already by his side, pushing him back down, her face a mask of rage. He didn't know if that was directed at him or the shit happening on the screen, but he didn't care.

When the video began Rune had been brimming with anxiety, now, 30 seconds in, he was so angry he didn't give a flying fuck if his name was flashed on the screen for all the world to see.

The Doctor's hand stayed on his chest, a warning not to move. She shifted enough for him to see what was happening on screen, though.

In the end he was not recognizable by a long shot, nothing but a small dark figure moving through the shadow and smoke landscape, taking down the hooligans in a mere two seconds - precise, fast and just a touch brutal.

Textbook perfect.

The third hooligan, the one with the broken shoulder, dragged himself off to the right, vanishing off screen as Rune half carried Julian to the left, and like the night before the sound of a car engine revved up beyond anything healthy or normal signaled the impending catastrophe.

This time Rune saw the stolen police car plow into the scaffolding. It proved to be a truly stupid move; the scaffolding folded in, crashing onto the car at the same time, as it tore all along the housing front in a spectacular chain reaction.

Julian's scream broke through the commotion. The unadulterated sound of a man's blinding pain as a contrast to the view of his last moment on earth.

Nobody would expect any human being to survive that.

The moment he had pushed Julian to the ground and shoved himself on top of him, was obscured to guess work by the smoke and dust and chaos. He, having been there, was able to make it out on the screen.

An outsider saw nothing but them vanishing in the plume of dust that rolled through the screen, caught in the light of the flares, swallowing all of it in a blood red wall.

Rune was pretty sure he saw a concrete mixing tub and an actual concrete mixer landing were he and Julian had been buried. That much weight would explain his leg - he winced at the thought.

And then, silence settled.

Even knowing the outcome of the video Rune was half convinced he had just watched someone die.

The first thing to move was the shithead in the car.

Correction: the two shitheads in the car. The goon with the broken shoulder crawled out of the passenger side, looking barely alive, bloody and broken. The man that emerged from the driver's side looked like an interchangeable copy of his three friends from the distance. Black jeans, black jacket, buzz cut.

Number three had truly not been able to drive a car.

The only consolation in that fuck-up.

In the background of the video people were now yelling for the police, for an ambulance, running down the stairs and screamed about helping.

The camera shook, but whoever handled it still managed to zoom in on the Nazis limping away from the car and their friends.

And then came the words that made everything impossibly more difficult.

“Shit. Oh my god, look at this. Look, something's moving! Something's moving, they're alive.

Kerstin go left. Left. They're alive!”

The mound of shattered scaffolding shivered - and it was an impressive mound from the outside, almost as impressive as it had been heavy on the inside - then it shook, metal poles sliding off to the sides, then the concrete mixing tub – including concrete, judging from the sluggish way it moved, then a figure dusted in light grey pushed through and up and out into a kneeling position, the evenly colored surface only broken by dark streaks on the right side of his body.

That looked bad. His pain was obvious in the way he moved. That he had shielded Julian under him would be undeniably clear the moment someone saw the police officer and the way he was buried in the debris, invisible on the video itself.

But the fact that he was able to move, able to make sure the other man was ok, that he was able to make a call and then limp away, before any of the helpers had even reached street level… it was bad.

Nobody who saw that would think that was even remotely normal.

The camera followed him until he vanished around the corner and a soft voice in the background of the video breathlessly declared: “Holy shit.. What the hell was that?”

Someone yelled for help down on the street, running full tilt toward the debris where Julian was still lying, his yell the final nail in that particular coffin.

“He's OK! He's alive!”

Rune closed his eyes as sirens sounded on TV, the video cutting back to the commentator's non-descript face and his pleasant non-descript voice.

“Police have not yet issued a statement about the occurrence. The officer is in hospital in serious condition with several broken bones and internal injuries, but is expected to make a full recovery. Nothing is known about his mysterious savior.”

***

Rune groaned and pulled the second pillow over his face after a short glance at the Doctor's stern face.

“Jaeger” She stated “has gone running interference and damage control. Your sister has called 5 times so far, trying to find out how badly you're hurt and probably to yell at you.”

Rune pulled the pillow away with his good arm and cut the thought of saying something, in favor of just looking at her. There was nothing to say.

He had fucked up. And he wasn't even sorry.

The doctor moved to turn off the TV before she turned back to him.

“My god, Andreas, what the hell were you thinking?! Do you want to end up back as a lab rat?”

Rune took a deep breath, tried to cover how many beats his heart had just skipped before it started to race with fury. He knew the stakes. He knew the risks. And still…

His voice a tightly controlled whip, he forced his eyes off her face, the anger a living thing inside him.

“Wait? What was I thinking? Have you seen the fucking tape?! They were about to kill him. They held him down and snapped his arm for FUN! And that shit with toppling the whole thing was not my idea.

What was I supposed to do? Let him die?

LET HIM FUCKING DIE TO SAVE MY HIDE?!”

He was already pushing his legs off the bed, but his ribs and shoulders cramped. A painful reminder why he should not be shouting under any circumstances or attempt to get up.

His breath cut off as waves of pain crashed through his lungs and all that followed the eruption was a pitiful whimper.

The Doctor was at his side a second later, stabilizing his upper body, slowly lowering it back in the pillow.

“Don't fight it, kid. I got you. Relax. Breathe. And don't talk.”

There perhaps was a witty answer somewhere out there. Rune didn't know it. Following her soft orders, doing what those gentle hands on his body proposed – lying down and not moving – was all his mind latched onto.

It took five painful minutes to get his muscles to relax and five more until his breath normalized.

“Fuck.”

“Yes”, she sounded tired.

“How pissed is Chris?”

“That depends on the answers he'll be getting from your police man.”

“He….” Rune almost sat up again, only the firm hand on his breast bone kept him down.

“He wouldn't…” it seemed ridiculous to even suggest it. “He wouldn't hurt anybody to bury that, would he?”

If there was one person in whose integrity Rune believed…

On the other hand, remembering the tale he had heard the night before, the shimmer in Chris' eyes as he relayed how he had killed that guard…

But then the guard had been a monster, not an innocent victim.

Chris would never hurt an innocent.

Chris wouldn't, a silent voice in the back of his head helpfully supplied, Jaeger, though?

And suddenly Rune understood how much he didn't know about the alter ego of the man.

He had no idea what Jaeger was actually capable of, if necessary.

But hurting a man who had done nothing wrong?

His eyes caught the Doctor's apologetic gaze, almost pity and a knowledge so old it didn't fit a woman looking no older than thirty.

Rune prayed he wasn't wrong.

He didn't want to find out.

 

 

He simply needed to rest and not move and run around and a few hours of sleep usually did the trick just fine.

As it had this time too, in a way. His ribs did not shift around with each breath anymore. Neither did his shoulder blade. That was the good news.

The one big bruise told him, locking down the wound last night had gifted him with tissue damage from hell. Yay.

And that would take days to mend on top of his normal healing time.

And then there was the leg.

After peeling away the cast that stabilized his knee, Rune sat for a whole minute staring at the Verdun battlefield re-enactment that was his thigh, knee and ankle.

It had not actually hurt that much last night.

Now it was an array of several colors not normally found on human skin. It also was grotesquely swollen from knee to ankle and looked like it had been crushed by a lot more than just a disconnected jumble of tumbling poles and wood.

And about every five minutes the muscles started to spasm, a feeling akin to high voltage current pulling everything in opposing directions.

In other words, it hurt like a bitch.

Someone had dropped off his emergency duffle with a choice of clothing . They all had several of those packed away at several emergency apartments, which was just a fancy term for hidey holes in several major German cities.

As Rune stumble back to his bed, sweat pants clutched in one hand…no way in hell was he able to pull these on standing up.. it occurred to him again, how elaborate all of it was.

Jaeger had built a network of safe places for decades. He owned a god damn former Russian military installation deep in the Brandenburg forests for god's sake… he just didn't use it. Not the way it was meant to be used.

Instead he hid, himself and others.

Rune, from the top of his head, could name 5 people able and willing to do something more than just blend in and help from the shadows. And several others who kept a lower profile, blending in.

The Doctor and her ability to sense and counteract anything that originated in an unusual genetic expression, no matter if illness or ability, fit perfectly into her chosen surroundings.

Tin worked for the world's biggest cybertech company in Munich as a security programmer. Rune never not found that funny.

Toby, who had a strange, yet also unobtrusive ability of almost complete heat resistance worked as a, absolutely shocking, firefighter in Berlin.

And then there were himself, his twin Anna, Mataeusz, Nin and Jaeger.

Mataeusz was a Polish born gypsy with a staggering agility and acrobatic ability. It wasn't just physical. He simply had an absolute sense of his body, his surroundings and knew exactly where he would be in the next 5 seconds.

If that was still natural and unenhanced, Rune didn't trust nature anymore. Building cats that looked like humans was really not fair. Not a surprise to anyone, Matti worked at a circus while moonlighting as a vigilante crime fighter. It was all very cliché, though, since Matti channeled the great classics of Robin Hood and Zorro so perfectly, it just fit.

Nin was a gentle little fey of Asian descent, one of her parents had probably been Chinese or Vietnamese, but nobody really knew. Like Anna and Rune, she had come from a secret Eastern German laboratory.

Nin was perhaps the one most burdened. She read people with a touch, feeling their memories, their “core” as she put it. Unsurprisingly, she also had the most secluded occupation. She played lady of the house at Jaeger's sprawling former military property and worked as a freelance journalist and author of pretty successful romance novels.

But whenever she left her lonely hideout and went out with them someone who shouldn't be allowed to roam free, vanished off the streets.

Rune would have sworn every oath, she smelled predators and monsters.

And then there was Anna. Anna appeared absolutely normal. She worked as a sound technician for one of the big German TV  channels, she loved horses and movies. In her free time, she sometimes helped with a project for disadvantaged youth and lifted cars.

She was tougher than any of them, except Rune maybe, and definitely stronger. Rumor had it, she once visited the father of one of her boys, a big brutish Turkish boxer and talked him into never hitting one of his kids or his wife again, ever.

Rune just happened to know that his 5’’4 sister beat the guy to within an inch of his pride with the standing warning, that she could and would drop by again, whenever she got the slightest whiff of one his family members being hurt.

He was so fucking proud of her.

Jaeger had blown a gasket.

And then there was Rune, student of international politics and comparative historical studies, avid participant and regular guest in all old linguistics lectures, presently writing his master’s thesis on “The hero narrative in the service of ruling powers – a historical comparison on the examples of Captain America and Beowulf.”, amateur hero and your friendly neighborhood freak in his spare time. ALso, able turn anything he touched into whatever he wanted.

And Jaeger.

National hero that nobody knew about.

Who spend his time pulling people from burning cars, inhuman dictatorships, evil laboratories and general hardship … and who just refused to admit to anybody that any of them existed. Rune had always had trouble truly understanding why.

Until last night.

Now he did.

He just didn't agree.

Slowly lowering himself back on the bed after downing almost a whole bottle of water, someone – Jaeger – had helpfully left on the nightstand, he fluffed the pillow under his injured shoulder and went through everything Jaeger had told last night.

Rune had seen the tattoo on the inner side of his right wrist countless times already. A number with a discolored later addition of “HC” in front. Even as a child he had known it meant that someone had branded his father once, they had incarcerated him and hurt him.

 

But times were different now.

Now more so than ever.

SHIELD had fallen, Hydra had fractured, secrets been thrown into the light of day, that overturned much of what the world had believed. People had been exposed against their will.

Tin had spent frantic nights, accompanied by some of his hacker friends, pulling electronic copies of old SSR files pertaining to Jaeger off the web. None of them had ever been more glad for his paranoia with their identities and existence than in that moment.

So, Jaeger had been right about that.

But now the world broke down in insecurity. The big dream of benevolent heroes, protecting the innocent,  had evaporated in the image of a creepy octopus.

And those able to help, still hid as if the fact they were other, maybe greater, was something shameful.

Jaeger had never forbidden their extracurricular activities. He only had drilled the fear of god – him – into their skulls should their existence come to light.

And he himself played a game of innuendo and catch me if you can with the police and SHIELD, never leaving enough evidence to conclude something had not been quite normal.

And wasn't that the dilemma of their existence?

 

***

 

Rune pondered ringing the nurse to let them know, he was awake.  

The clinic was perfect. They just declared themselves eccentric private patients and nobody blinked an eye at the fact he had slept – a quick glance at the clock above the door – 11 hours without anybody checking on him and only the Doctor herself treating him.  The downside was, when you were in, you were in and you weren't leaving, until she decided, you were allowed to.

So, that alone was reason to talk to her. Maybe she let herself be sweet talked into handing him over to Anna´s custody, who was a way less strict nurse maid.

He rang and plastered a smile to his face.

He only needed to convince her everything was shiny. It was just bumps and bruises and he was as fresh as the young morning.

The smile faltered as soon as the Doctor entered, her tall, slender frame, almost as tall as Rune's 1,80m, wrapped in her ever present white coat, her chestnut hair wrapped into her usual severe ponytail, but her exotically beautiful face, all angles and cheekbones and slanted eyes, drawn with worry.

He pushed himself up with a wince, the charade of “I don't hurt, let me out” fallen apart on the spot.

“What's wrong, Doc?”

Without a word she grabbed the remote off the table by the window.

Her other hand already pointing at him, her expression accepted no resistance.

“You, stay where you are. I'm not yet convinced you can't sustain permanent damage.”

The TV came to life, pictures of yesterday's street battles flickering over the screen, accompanied by a concerned commentator's voice and counted all the ways things went wrong when hooligans could take to the street like that.

The put up concern changed to muted excitement as he switched to the next news.

“Now for the extraordinary footage, caught on camera by an inhabitant, of the truly miraculous rescue of a police officer from a vile attack by Hooligans and a horrible accident…”

Rune's mouth opened before the commentator had even finished speaking.

He wanted to say something intelligent, but all he could muster, faced with the woman in front of him, her worry, her fear and possibly the sure knowledge of Jaeger's fury, was a drawn:

“Shit, no…..”

 

***

 

The TV did cut to grainy footage, shot with a cell phone camera not made for conditions in that street.

The only source of light were the flares and bengals burning bright, too bright to offer any good lighting.

A red sheen overlay everything, smoke obscuring the details.

Yet it was clear, the three neo nazis had specifically targeted the one police man staying behind when his colleagues beat a hasty retreat, hindered by a van in his back. They had grabbed him, dragged him back into the shadow of that same van and started to beat him like so much meat. Two had held him down at one point, while the third mercilessly kicked his torso.

They dragged him down the street, far behind the lines, they laughed, they hooted and their victim's scream when they shattered his arm with coldblooded intent brought Rune's blood to a boiling point.

He tried to move, before he even remembered his leg.

It barely held him upright at the moment under even the most gentle of circumstances and he immediately tumbled back with a vile curse, the Doctor was already by his side, pushing him back down, her face a mask of rage. He didn't know if that was directed at him or the shit happening on the screen, but he didn't care.

When the video began, Rune had been brimming with anxiety, now, 30 seconds in, he was so angry, he didn't give a flying fuck if his name was flashed on the screen for all the world to see.

The Doctor´s hand stayed on his chest, a warning not to move. She shifted though, enough for him to see what happened on screen.

In the end, he was not recognizable by a long shot, nothing but a small dark figure, moving through the shadow and smoke landscape, beating up the hooligans in mere two seconds - precise, fast and just a touch brutal.

Textbook perfect.

 

The third hooligan, the one with the broken shoulder, dragged himself off to the right, vanishing off screen, as Rune half carried Julian to the left, and here too, like the night before, it was the sound of a car engine revved up beyond anything healthy or normal, that signaled the impending catastrophe.

This time Rune saw the stolen police car plow into the scaffolding. It proved to be a truly stupid move; the scaffolding folding in, crashing onto the car at the same time, as it, in a spectacular chain reaction, tore all along the housing front.

It was again Julian's scream that broke through the commotion. The unadulterated sound of a man's blinding pain as a contrast of the view of his last moment on earth.

Nobody would expect any human to survive that.

The moment when he had pushed Julian to the ground and shoved himself on top of him, a human protective shield, was obscured to guess work by the smoke and dust and chaos. He, as someone who had been there, was able to make it out on the screen.

An outsider probably saw nothing but them vanishing in the plume of dust that rolled through the screen, caught in the light of the flares and swallowing it all in a blood red wall.

Rune was pretty sure, he saw a concrete mixing tub and an actual concrete mixer landing were he and Julian had been buried. That much weight would at least explain his leg and he winced at the image alone.

And then, silence settled.

Even knowing the outcome of the video, Rune was half convinced, he had just watched someone die.

 

The first thing to move was the shithead in the car.

Correction, the two shitheads in the car. The goon with the broken shoulder crawled out the passenger side, looking barely alive, bloody and broken. From the driver's side a man emerged, who, from a distance looked like an interchangeable copy of his three friends. Black jeans, black jacket, buzz cut hair.

So, number three had truly not been able to drive a car.

The only consolation in that fuck-up.

In the background of the video, people now yelled for the police, for an ambulance, were getting ready to charge down to the street, screamed about helping.

The camera shook, but whoever handled it,  zoomed in on the Nazis limping away from the car and their friends.

 

And then came the words that made everything impossibly more difficult.

“Shit. Oh my god, look at this. Look, something's moving! Something's moving, they're alive.

Kerstin go left. Left. They're alive!”

The mound of shattered scaffolding shivered - and it was an impressive mound from the outside, almost as impressive as it had been heavy on the inside - then it shook, metal poles sliding off to the sides, then the concrete mixing tub – including concrete, judging from the sluggish way it moved, then a figure dusted in light grey pushed through and up and out into a kneeling position, the even colored surface only broken by dark streaks on the right side of his body.

That looked bad. His pain was obvious in the way he moved. That he had shielded Julian under him would be undeniably clear the moment someone saw the police officer and the way he was buried in the debris, invisible on the video itself.

But the fact alone that he was able to move, able to make sure the other man was ok, that he, after a short conversation, was able to make a call and then limp away, haltingly at first, then steadily faster, before anybody even had managed to clear the stairway to reach them… it was bad.

Nobody who saw that would remotely think that was normal.

 

The camera followed him, until he, stumbling and limping, his right arm folded across his torso, vanished around the corner and a soft voice in the background of the video breathlessly declared: “Holy shit.. What did we just witness?”

Someone yelled for help and emerged through the front entrance, running full tilt toward the debris where Julian was still lying, his yell the final nail in that particular coffin.

“He's OK! He's alive!”

Rune closed his eyes, as sirens sounded on TV, the video cutting back to the commentator's non-descript face and his pleasant non-descript voice.

“Police have not yet issued a statement about the occurrence. The officer is in hospital in serious condition with several broken bones and inner injuries, but is expected to make a full recovery. Nothing is known about his mysterious savior.”

 

***

 

Rune groaned and pulled the second pillow over his face after a short glance at the Doctor's stern face.

“Jaeger” She stated “has gone, running interference and damage control. Your sister has so far called 5 times, trying to find out how badly you're hurt and probably to yell at you.”

Rune pulled the pillow away with his good arm and cut the thought of saying something, in favor of just looking at her. There was nothing to say.

He had fucked up. And he wasn't even sorry.

The doctor moved to turn off the TV, before she turned back to him.

“My god, Andreas, what the hell were you thinking?! Do you want to end up back as a lab rat, cut, poked and studied?”

Rune took a deep breathe, tried to cover how many beats his heart had just skipped before it started to race with fury. He knew the stakes. He knew the risks. And still…

His voice a tightly controlled whip, he forced his eyes off her face, the anger a living thing inside him.

“Wait? What was I thinking? Have you seen the fucking tape?! They were about to kill him. They held him down and snapped his arm for FUN! And that shit with toppling the whole thing, was not my idea.

What was I supposed to do? Let him die?

LET HIM FUCKING DIE TO SAVE MY HIDE?!”

 

He was already pushing his legs off the bed, when his ribs and shoulders cramped. A painful reminder why he should not be shouting under any circumstances or attempt to get up.

His breathe cut off as waves of pain crashed through his lungs and all that followed the eruption was a pitiful whimper.

The Doctor was at his side a second later, stabilizing his upper body, slowly lowering it back in the pillow.

“Don't fight it, kid. I got you. Relax. Breathe. And don't talk.”

There perhaps was a witty answer somewhere out there. Rune didn't know it. Following her soft orders, doing what those gentle hands on his body proposed – lying down and not moving – was all his mind latched onto.

It took five painful minutes to get his muscles to relax and five more until his breathe normalized.

“Fuck.”

“Yes”,  she sounded tired.

“How pissed is Chris?”

“That depends on the answers, he'll be getting from your police man.”

“He….” Rune almost sat up again, only the firm hand on his breast bone kept him down.

“He wouldn't…” it seemed ridiculous to even suggest it. “He would not hurt anybody to bury that, would he?”

If there was one person in whose integrity Rune believed…

On the other hand, remembering the tale, he had heard the night before, the shimmer in Chris’ eyes, as he had relayed how he killed that guard…

But then, the guard had been a monster, not an innocent victim.

Chris would never hurt an innocent.

Chris wouldn't, a silent voice in the back of his head helpfully supplied, Jaeger, though?

And suddenly, Rune understood how much he didn't know about the alter ego of the man.

He had no idea, what Jaeger was actually capable off, if necessary.

But hurting a man, who had done nothing wrong?

His eyes caught the Doctor's apologetic gaze, almost pity and a knowledge so old, it didn't fit to a woman looking no older than thirty.

Rune prayed he wasn´t wrong

He didn't want to find out.

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

****

It was so easy, Jaeger thought, as he walked down the cold and sterile hospital hallway towards room number 10, to fool ordinary people with a face, a badge and the expected demeanor.

 

Back at the beginning, after he´d just fled the monster that made him, the question of “why”, the blemish cast on his very character by the fact he could shift his appearance, had been at the center of what he did.

“It enhances what´s in you.”, Cap had said.

Had there already been that much deception in a craftsman from a small village in rural central Germany?

At some point he had stopped asking that question, acceptance taking, that he would not become a monster – unlike Hydra.

Killing them had helped.

And wasn't that as far from a reassuring thought as they got?

For a piercing moment of clarity, Jaeger understood how fine a line he was treading at that moment.

Everybody was a villain in someone else's story.

The man walking into a victim's hospital room to gauge their knowledge, their willingness to keep a dangerous secret…

A fine line indeed.

He opened the door slowly. Had this been one of his own he wouldn't have it unguarded.

But not drawing attention to it was as good a security measure against overly pushy press, possible neo Nazis out on revenge and the occasional weirdo as any.

Who would, in all honesty, suspect the “heroes” to come for the man?

Well, nobody was supposed to suspect heroes, period!

He couldn't even fault Rune for that.

The development of smartphones made everything so incomparably more difficult.

Had the kid kept his mouth shut, though, Jaeger wouldn't have had to come here.

And for that, he deserved the anger he got.

On the other hand Rune was lonely. Not a creature born for the shadows as Jaeger himself, and unable to truly connect to any “normal” person, of course he'd look to find those connections elsewhere.

Especially since he also tended to prefer men over women. A fact Jaeger of course did not know and wouldn't officially know until the kid finally gathered his courage and spilled the beans.

So, probably never.

And now all this had led to him not only show his not so ordinary side in public, he also had told the man who had witnessed it his name. Nickname, but still, he went by it enough to be recognized.

 

Remarkable eyes set in a pale face marked by pain and blood loss greeted him as he slipped into the room.

 

He looked small in that bed, hooked up to an IV, connected to machines that monitored his blood oxygen and heartbeat.

Jaeger estimated the man to be no older than twenty five and yet, though he didn't speak the question in his eyes was as clear as day.

And Jaeger answered.

“Herr Sander, my name is Thomas Meyer. I am here on behalf of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany. We would like to talk to you about…”, belatedly Jaeger noticed what was running on the TV opposite the bed.

A German news channel, playing the same video all of Germany had seen 20 times already today, and would see many more times before interest waned.

A man on the ground, yelling with pain. And from the lower right corner, a dark figure darting onto the screen, crashing into the attackers, knocking them out in seconds.

Julian Sander followed his gaze, slowly, sluggishly, barely moving his head; if that was to avoid pain from the arm laying in a heavy cast next to him or from his head, covered in bruises and scratches, Jaeger didn´t know, but it might become important.

“I am here to talk to you about your… unexpected savior.”

A flare of intelligence in the younger man's eyes, then dragging silence, before he finally spoke. His voice was hoarse, strained, broken by low gasps for breath.

“What do you know about him?”

Jaeger sat in the chair next to the bed and watched the man perform another agonizingly slow turn of his head, towards him this time.

“That's the problem, Herr Sander, we don't know anything, but we were hoping you could help us there.”

 

***

 

When Anna came to pick him up Rune kept his mouth shut.

Jaeger hadn't come back, hadn't even called, and silence was a godawful punishment.

Thank the Gods for his sister.

She looked so sweet with her bright blond curls and blue eyes, and she destroyed that impression the moment she opened her mouth. A voice like whiskey and smoke and words befitting a construction worker.

A body like a 50s movie goddess and ripped jeans patched with lace and hello kitty stickers.

She was a whirlwind, loud and brash, shaking everything up while making it impossible to fault her for it.

A force of nature. Who liked meat and beer.

And thankfully, him.

“So… you fucked up.”

“Yeah” Rune curled into the passenger seat, his leg still in the cast, the shoulder in a sling.

“Is he at least pretty?” Yes, that was Anna. Anna who knew that his menu never had been girls only.

“Very.”

She started the car and turned her head to look at him.

“Oh. THAT pretty?”

“Yeah. Maybe” Rune wouldn´t think about it. It was a stupid idea. Even for him.

“Wanna see him again?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Jaeger would skin me alive.” Or not speak to him for a decade. “Also: not associating anybody with us in that capacity…”

She finished the sentence for him.

“…keeps them alive. Yeah. I know.” She pulled out of the parking lot and onto the quiet small town street.

Her style of driving was shockingly subdued compared to the rest of her larger than life persona. She was a safe driver. A calm driver. Only she cussed as if the world depended on her commenting traffic. Rune had heard the running live commentary for years. He was immune to being shocked by his twin at this point.

So he almost missed her next words to him.

“Jaeger called. Told me to get you.”

He eyed her, waiting for the rest, didn´t yet hope to be forgiven that easily.

“Your boy doesn't remember. Severe concussion's what the doctors say. Will likely never recover those memories.” She looked at him with a smiled. “So, how about you accidentally run into him and ask him out for coffee?”

At that, Rune laughed. Screw the pain. Anna was so out for trouble.

Remembering Julian, the way he had talked. How clear headed he had been...

“Concussion, yes. Memory loss? Cold chance in hell. He was completely clear and present.”

They looked at each other, stared for almost the entire time she had to pause at a red light. In the end, it was her that spoke again.

“You think he lied.”

“I am convinced he lied. I'd bet my club's next football game he lied.”

“Why would he? Jaeger disguised as federal police or something, your boy had no reason to lie.”

Rune tried to school his face. This was not the time to smile, no matter how much he wanted to.

“I asked him to.” This got him another stare.

“Well, what do you know…”Anna thoughtfully smacked her lips, while her gaze lingered on his face, until he had to point her to the green light turning green.

“You need to tell Jaeger.” Her face grew serious at that, worried even, though, Rune guessed, more for him than for the stranger

“Would he hurt him? Honestly, Anna… would Jaeger hurt him to shut him up?”

She swerved the car to the right so hard Rune's shoulder got pushed against the seat belt in a jarring reminder why he was in her car.

Injury.

He tried to swallow it, tried to grit his teeth. He yelled.

“Are you fucking brain dead, Andreas? Did you have a lobotomy and nobody told me? Are you nuts?”

Rune raised an eyebrow, gritting his teeth in a feeble attempt to get his body under control.

“You trying to kill me? Seriously?” She reached over and poked his good leg. Her face telling him to get over it. Thank god, she loved him.

“That man lives to keep our secrets, Anna. And Julian happens to have seen, very closely, what I can do and survive.” Rune took a slow breath and let it go with deliberate care as the pain finally subsided. Only to have his eyes snap to the sound of the steering wheel creaking, then up to his sisters face.

“Anna… this is about a man's life. He's off the hook for now. Telling Jaeger might bring Julian straight back into the hot zone. And let's be honest. There are maybe half a dozen people in Germany who're able to deal with Jaeger and not go stir crazy, end up cowering or kissing his feet.” He reached for her hand and gently removed it from the steering wheel to keep her from breaking it.

“This is on me. And what Jaeger told me...” He closed his eyes. Took another breath. Then looked at her again, eyed the deep grooves between her eyebrows, the lines carved around her mouth, her hand a fist on her thigh.

“He wouldn't, would he?” And, unlike the Doctor, Anna answered.

“Of course he wouldn't. Jaeger has almost as much of a hero complex as you do. He'd cut off his own hands before he'd hurt a victim. Intense talking might happen, but he would never hurt him. Don't be stupid.” Her snort echoed through the car and Rune found sacking with relief.

“Ok.” He hadn't known how much he needed to hear those words. “Ok.”

He let out another slow breath and nodded, first to himself, then to her.

“So… your car, your phone.” He knew her well enough to gauge her reaction, to know how to break the tense silence. “You call.”

“You coward!” Her voice was brimming with laughter. He might have joined, had it hurt just a bit less.

****   
  
  



End file.
